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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Improving The World's Largest Dungeon: New Map

Looking at the WLD it's not hard to see that even if your party went all the way from one end to the other they'll likely miss out on a whole lot. In fact it seems designed to use only 6-7 regions out of the entire 16. That's a heck of a waste, especially when consider that even if the PCs are determined to explore the whole thing they'll find the majority of the regions are simply not a challenge anymore. This is of course a problem with the grid placement of the dungeon, so here's an idea for a linear version of the map...

click for really huge version

Obviously I'll have to adjust the entrances and exits to various regions, closing off some paths and maybe making some new ones. Regions K, L, and H are basically one big "mega region". It always was anyway but this design makes it a bit harder to get to H (which is normally one of the "exit" areas). D is the only one completely outside the linear map and it will now exist underneath the rest of the dungeon (which is really the only way it makes any damn sense). It'll also get pretty heavily modified, because frankly I hate region D with a fiery passion.

Of course they'll have to be significant work done adjusting the challenge levels for various regions, but considering what a poor job the WLD does at making things level-appropriate I don't think it'll be that big an issue. We'll see how this goes.